Breaker

'Yes.'

'That's a difficult journey,' said Galbraith sympathetically, doing a rough calculation in his head. 'It must take you-what?-an hour and a half of traveling each way. Have you ever thought of moving?'

'We didn't just think about it,' said Sumner with a hint of irony. 'We did it a year ago when we moved to Lymington. And, yes, you're right, it's an awful journey, particularly in the summer when the New Forest's packed with tourists.' He sounded unhappy about it.

'Where did you move from?'

'Chichester.'

Galbraith remembered the notes Griffiths had shown him after Sumner's telephone call. 'That's where your mother lives, isn't it?'

'Yes. She's been there all her life.'

'You too? A born-and-bred Chichester man?'

Sumner nodded.

'Moving must have been a bit of a wrench, particularly if it meant adding an hour to your journey each way?'

He ignored the question to stare despondently out of the window. 'You know what I keep thinking?' he said then. 'If I'd stuck to my guns and refused to budge, Kate wouldn't be dead. We never had any trouble when we lived in Chichester.' He seemed to realize immediately that his remarks could be interpreted in a number of ways and added what was presumably intended as an explanation: 'I mean, Lymington's full of strangers. Half the people you meet don't even live there.'

Galbraith had a quick word with Griffiths before she left to accompany William and Hannah Sumner home. She had been given time, while the scene-of-crime officers finished their search of Langton Cottage, to go home in order to change and pack a bag, and was dressed now in a baggy yellow sweater and black leggings. She looked very different from the severe young woman in the police uniform, and Galbraith wondered wryly if the father and daughter would feel more or less comfortable with the Sloppy Joe. Less, he fancied. Police uniforms inspired confidence.

'I'll be with you early tomorrow morning,' he told her, 'and I need you to prod him a bit before I get there. I want lists of their friends in Lymington, a second list of friends in Chichester, and a third list of work friends in Portsmouth.' He ran a tired hand around his jaw, while he tried to organize his memory. 'It would be helpful if he splits those with boats, or with access to boats, from those without, and even more helpful if he separates Kate's personal friends from their joint friends.'

'Okey-doke,' she said.

He smiled. 'And try to get him to talk about Kate,' he went on. 'We need to know what her routine was, how she managed her day, which shops she used, that kind of thing.'

'No problem.'

'And his mother,' he said. 'I get the impression Kate forced him to move away from her, which may have caused some friction within the family.'

Griffiths looked amused. 'I don't blame her,' she said. 'He's ten years older than she was, and he'd been living at home with Mummy for thirty-seven years before they got married.'

'How do you know?'

'I had a chat with him when I asked him for his previous address. His mother gave him the family home as a wedding present in return for him taking a small mortgage to help her buy a flat in some sheltered accommodation across the road.'

'A bit too close for comfort, eh?'

She chuckled. 'Bloody stifling, I should think.'

'What about his father?'

'Died ten years ago. Up until then it was a menage a trois. Afterward, a menage a deux. William was the only child.'

Galbraith shook his head. 'How come you're so well informed? It can only have been a very little chat.'

She tapped the side of her nose. 'Sensible questions and a woman's intuition,' she said. 'He's been waited on all his life, which is why he's so convinced he won't be able to cope.'

'Good luck then,' he said, meaning it. 'I can't say I envy you.'

'Someone has to look after Hannah.' She sighed. 'Poor little kid. Do you ever wonder what would have happened to you if you'd been abandoned the way most of the kids we arrest are abandoned?'

'Sometimes,' Galbraith admitted. 'Other times I thank God my parents pushed me out of the nest and told me to get on with it. You can be loved too much as well as too little, you know, and I'd be hard-pushed to say which was the more dangerous.'

*8*

The decision to question Steven Harding was made at eight o'clock that Monday night when the Dorset police received confirmation that he was on board his boat in the Lymington River; although the interview itself did not take place until after nine because the officer in charge, Detective Superintendent Carpenter, had to drive from Winfrith in order to lead it. DI John Galbraith, who was still in Poole, was instructed to make his own way to